Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Ilves was born in Stockholm, Sweden; his parents Endel Ilves (1923–1991) and Irene Ilves (née Rebane; 1925–2018 ) fled Estonia after its occupation by the Soviet Union during World War II.

His maternal grandmother was a Russian from Saint Petersburg.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves (born 26 December 1953) is an Estonian politician who served as the fourth president of Estonia from 2006 until 2016.

He grew up in the United States in Leonia, New Jersey, and graduated from Leonia High School in 1972 as valedictorian.

Ilves worked as a research assistant in Columbia University Department of Psychology from 1974 to 1979.

He received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in the same subject from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

From 1979 to 1981 he served as assistant director and English teacher at the Open Education Center in Englewood, New Jersey.

Ilves then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; from 1981 to 1983 he was director and administrator of arts at Vancouver Arts Centre and from 1983 to 1984 he taught Estonian literature and linguistics at Simon Fraser University.

From 1984 to 1993, Ilves worked in Munich, Germany as a journalist for Radio Free Europe, being the head of its Estonian desk since 1988.

Ilves worked as a diplomat and journalist, and he was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s.

As Estonia had restored its independence in 1991, Ilves became Ambassador of Estonia to the United States in 1993, also serving as Ambassador to Canada and Mexico at the same time.

He served in the government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2002.

In December 1996, Ilves became Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving until he resigned in September 1998, when he became a member of a small opposition party (Peasants' Party, agrarian-conservative).

Ilves was soon elected chairman of the People's Party (reformed Peasants' Party), which formed an electoral cartel with the Moderates, a centrist party.

After the March 1999 parliamentary election he became foreign minister again, serving until 2002, when the so-called Triple Alliance collapsed.

From 2001 to 2002 he was the leader of the People's Party Moderates.

He resigned from the position after the party's defeat in the October 2002 municipal elections, in which the party received only 4.4% of the total votes nationwide.

Later, he was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006.

He supported Estonian membership in the European Union and succeeded in starting the negotiations which led to Estonia joining the European Union on 1 May 2004.

In early 2004, the Moderates party renamed itself the Estonian Social Democratic Party.

In 2003, Ilves became an observer member of the European Parliament and, on 1 May 2004, a full member.

In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, Ilves was elected MEP in a landslide victory for the Estonian Social Democratic Party.

He sat with the Party of European Socialists group in the Parliament.

He was elected as President of Estonia by an electoral college on 23 September 2006 and his term as President began on 9 October 2006.

Katrin Saks took over his MEP seat when Ilves became President of Estonia in 2006.

He was reelected by Parliament in 2011.

In 2011, he was re-elected for a second five-year term.

He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014.

In 2013, it was announced that Ilves had accepted a position on the Council on CyberSecurity's Advisory Board.

In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN.

He also received an honorary degree from St. Olaf College in 2014 in recognition of his relationship with the college.

In addition to Estonian, Ilves also speaks English, German, Latvian and Spanish.

By Ilves's own admission, he speaks Estonian with a comparatively strong American accent, on account of spending his formative and young adult years in America and Germany.

From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

In 2015, it was announced that Ilves had agreed to join the group of advisers to the World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union.

Beginning in 2016, Ilves has been co-chairing The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology.

In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

From July 2017, Ilves has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Ilves belongs to the advisory council of the Alliance for Securing Democracy.